Mary
Katherine Goddard, printer, newspaper publisher, and postmaster,
was
born in Connecticut on June 16, 1738. She lived in Baltimore, Maryland
from 1774 until her death at age seventy-eight, in 1816.

After the death of her father in 1762, she and her mother
joined
her brother in Providence, R.I. where he had established a printing
shop,
and where both mother and daughter began their careers as printers.
Mary
Katherine actively worked in publishing the weekly Providence Gazette
until
the end of 1768 when she joined her brother’s printing office in
Philadelphia,
where he published the Pennsylvania Chronicle. Though the publication
remained
under the brother’s name, William Goddard, Mary Katherine managed the
shop,
one of the largest in the colonies. In May 1773, William started a new
printing business in Baltimore and began Baltimore’s first newspaper,
the
Maryland Journal. In February 1774, the Philadelphia shop closed and
Mary
Katherine moved to Baltimore to take over the new plant and newspaper.

The May 10, 1775 issue of the Maryland Journal made
official what
had been in practice for over a year when the colophon was changed to
read,
“Published by M. K. Goddard.” Mary Katherine proved to be a steady,
impersonal
newspaper editor and during the Revolution she was usually Baltimore’s
only printer. From her press, in January 1777, came the first printed
copy
of the Declaration of Independence to include the names of the signers.
Mary Katherine Goddard was also responsible for issuing several
Almanacs,
while in Baltimore, which now hold a place in the Maryland Historical
Society.

In 1775, Mary Katherine became postmaster of Baltimore,
probably
the first woman so appointed in the colonies, and certainly the only
one
to hold so important a post after the Declaration of Independence. She
continued in the office for fourteen years until in October 1789 when,
much against her will, she was relieved on the ground that someone was
needed who could visit and superintend the Southern department of the
postal
system. The authorities believed that this responsibility involved more
traveling than a woman could manage. The esteem in which Goddard was
held
is revealed by the fact that over two hundred of the leading
businessmen
of Baltimore endorsed her petition to the Postmaster General to retain
her position. Remaining in Baltimore, she continued to operate, until
1809
or 1810, the bookshop she had begun as an adjunct of the printing
business.
She died in Baltimore at the age of seventy-eight and was buried in the
graveyard of the St. Paul’s Parish.

Because Mary Katherine did not engage in public
controversies but
remained an impersonal editor, there are few statements that reflect
her
personal point of view. Her brother described her as, “an expert and
correct
compositor of types,” and respect for her abilities as a postmaster is
shown in letters by such diverse people as Ebenezer Hazard and Thomas
Jefferson.